starring Madeleine Stowe and Aidan

Quinn

directed by Michael Apted

playing at Loews Fresh Pond

If anything, Michael Apted's "Blink" is pretty damn scary. Madeleine Stowe plays Emma Brody, a woman who receives a cornea transplant after twenty years of blindness only to witness a murder, In a new twist on the "blind-women erotic thriller," hallucinations plague Emma as a result of the surgery. Emma's eyes and brain, so unused to processing sight, replay images long after she has actually seen them. Director Apted and script writer Dana Stevens milk this replay mechanism dry in the name of frightening their audience, The only images that pop up on emma are horrible ones.

The remainder of "Blink" undermines this interesting premise by resorting to typical thriller genre stupidity. For example, Emma exacerbates her situation by acting as no sane murder Witness would. She continues to live alone in a darkened apartment in a seedy neighborhood, foolhardily opting to elude the cops who are assigned to guard her so that she can traipse through the Chicago night by herself.

Needless to say, a big, strong detective comes on the scene to protect our heroine. The interplay--the flirting, fucking, and fighting--between Emma and Detective John Hallstrom (Aidan "Ole Blue Eyes" Quinn) is so hackneyed that you begin to feel embarrassed for the actors. The embarrassment grows during the required epiphanal sex scene. Against a background of Muzak, we are treated to close-ups of the big blue vein in the side of Madeleine Stowe's boob and the long hair on Aidan Quinn's chest. Director Apted has no sense of tasteful nudity. Or relevant nudity, for that matter. Why does Apted waste precious minutes on the scene where Emma walks around her apartment naked, sniffing flowers: Is he implying that she has blossomed sexually? Do we care?

The shenanigans continue as Emma, in a scene that appears to be borrowed from "The Fugitive," disappears from her police protection during the St. Patrick's Days parade. It's hard to shake the idea that a great deal of "Blink" is lifted from other films. Take "Blink's most recent predecessor, "Jennifer 8," for example, which recounts the same tale, but with better acting. Uma Thurman's cross-eyed, blank gaze and way of seeing right through people outclass Stowe's blind woman rendition. Since Stowe can't get the right look in her eyes, she distracts our attention by repetitively rubbing her oh-so-sensual mouth.

Nevertheless, Emma, a fiddler for a semi-hot Chicago band called The Drovers, can be quite interesting. With her long black hair crimped and an awful "alternative" wardrobe, she is at times strangely reminiscent of Elvira. Stowe enhances Emma's powerful presence with a guttural voice and gunshot laugh and does a creditable job of charting Emma's emotional development as she regains her sight. Previous to her surgery, Emma, having created an imaginary world in her head, is happy and trusting. Once she is able to see, however, the real world proves to be a letdown, and her humor becomes biting, cynical, and sarcastic. Agitated by the murder she has discovered, she snarls at the police station, "Are there any cops around here or do you all just sit around and drink coffee?"

Although one expects a certain amount of implausibility from thrillers, the gaffes in "Blink" point to a general sloppiness on the part of the film makers. Within a period of a couple of days, the characters attend a Bulls game, the St. Patrick's Day parade, and a Cubs game, even though the spring baseball season doesn't being until April.

The movie is rife with other booboos and inconsistencies. For example, halfway through the movie, Emma's best friend Candice (Laurie Metcalf) asks her how sex is for a blind person. If these women are as groovy and open as they seem, the subject would have come up years before the time we meet them. More seriously, one of Emma's flashback images is that of her own bloodied face at the age of eight after she has been blinded--so how does she know how she looked after the accident? Also, Emma's lonely apartment is filled with richly colored and patterned fabrics. Who would see them?

And who would actually go to see this move? "Blink's trite plot, sloppy direction and generally forgettable acting should be enough to keep anyone away. "Blink" and miss it.